First published in Status Quo in August 2014, this essay is part of the recently released collection of essays by Bill Barnett, Collective Swag, covering everything from low-cost travel to blunders in modern architecture. When not grousing about life, the author runs a hospitality consultancy business, and is also a public speaker and columnist.
Residential Properties tagged with hotel branded names continue to grow and evolve as the top-end market shifts from the beach to the big city.
One of my recurring nightmares is set on a tropical island at sunset. A burnt orange ball sinks behind an erotically charged image of a scantily clad swimsuit model gently grasping onto the side of a mega-villa infinity swimming pool. She stares aimlessly onto an empty horizon. But then, the golden moment suddenly takes a dark twist when a giant reptilian tail appears out of nowhere and breaks the tranquility with a cacophony of gushing water sounds. The lovely girl disappears in a flurry of bubbles. Like a monster straight out of the Black Lagoon, the half-man, half-reptile creature prey son those who dare going solo in their waterfront cliffhanging mansions.
Welcome to my Great Recession nightmare. It doesn’t take Freud to make the link between the disappearing pool girl and the real estate investor who once embraced the hotel-branded pool villa craze in Asia.
Two icons helmed the golden age of the branded residences movement: Aman’s Adrian Zecha and K P Ho of Banyan Tree. These two propelled the entire leisure experience away from rented box and into your very own private space. The promise of being able to go to paradise, get naked, swim, and then stay naked for the rest and the rise of the day was a sexier stimulant for the class created rich than Viagra.
Before the Big Sleep of 2007, hotel-branded resort villas flew off the shelves across Asia’s leading resort destinations: Phuket, Bali, Koh Samui, Vietnam followed the money and even Cambodia. Brandologists and property hucksters could quote the doctrine with the conviction of a Jehovah’s Witnesses pitching the imminence of the apocalypse. The doctrine was based on the assured value-add of internationally recognized brands to real estate offerings: premium pricing, an amped up sales pace and that intangible of tangibles-prestige.
But then the crystal-clear wisdom of investing in a brand-name villa became muddied by the pond scum of Bernie Madoff and unscrupulous derivatives traders, who sank the economy and killed the pool party. The multimillion-dollar hotel-branded leisure residence segment came crashing down and has yet to fully re-emerge. While such projects once boasted a few sales each month, today the trading remains sluggish, with even developments in leading markets like Phuket and Bali taking four to five months to sell just one villa.
So Asia’s developers took to a new tactic: going low or high and staying out of the meaty middle entirely.
These extremes put pressures on size and price. The market ended up with many smallish investment types who were more suitable for a meagre vegan appetite than the ravenous carnivores developers once adored.
Domestic buyers replaced the elite international crowd, and the rise of the Asian middle class created a new East, where the West once lived. It was Paradise Lost.
But the smart large property developers followed the money trail away from the beach and into town. Investment in urban property was still booming, even while the rest of the global market went bust then stagnant. Suddenly, hotel brands clamoured for urban offerings. As investment became a more domestic affair, the big brands and developers in Asian cities began to catch more and more rich locals and an increasing aspirational class who loved city centre living, with its upscale retail malls, fancy eateries and cultural offerings. What better way to showcase a large mixed-use real estate offering than leading with a prestigious hotel brand to elevate the entire lifestyle complex?
Branding has definitively gone to town. In every CBD across Asia, international hotel brands and celebrity designers have entered into the high-stakes name game, launching a massive number of new offerings. Where and when the saturation point comes is anyone’s guess, but taking a look at the Philippines – where a Paris Hilton affiliated residential resort project has prospered – might signal that the air is getting pretty thin. At the same time, the familiar resort destinations in the region are again leaping into the deep end with new high-end hotel-branded pool villas. Whether or not they can rise from the depths, avoiding the leviathans that wreck my dream time, is anybody’s guess.
Read the entire essay collection Collective Swag online
By Bill Barnett, Collective Swag
